Is Defending Freedom Enough?

Metaphysics and Epistemology
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In the recent “cartoon jihad”, the vast amount of arguments against the Muslim fanatics pertained to why freedom, specifically of speech, cannot be trumped by religious beliefs. Indeed, in an op-ed I wrote, I took the same general approach.

But after more thinking, I wonder if this is really enough? The arguments based on the value of freedom seem only to convince those who share that basic conviction. The Muslim protestors, however, do not - to quote one of their placards, “Freedom - Go to Hell.” Indeed, much of the reaction of the Muslims shows clearly a vast disconnect between Islam and the West - the Muslims do not seem to understand, even on a basic level, why freedom must trump religious beliefs.

Of course, this makes sense. It folllows logically from their basic premises, specifically from faith and their belief in the authority of the Koran. If you truly believe that the Koran is to be obeyed and that it commands the conquest of the infidels, then it follows such a course should be followed - freedom of speech be damned, that infidel trick.

In the end, this comes down to the old question - how does one argue for reason with someone who has already abandoned it? But one of my main curiosities is whether fighting against religion as such should be a higher priority than it currently is, especially in op-eds. In most of those I read opposing the cartoon jihad, few directly confronted Islam as the myth that it is, but instead focused on why Muslims are overstepping their bounds to oppose dhimmitude on the world. Well, if they are true Muslims, they should. Should we be focusing more effort on calling their religious bluff, or is it simply a matter of convincing our allies of the right position, and hunkering down for the battle of faith vs. reason?

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But one of my main curiosities is whether fighting against religion as such should be a higher priority than it currently is, especially in op-eds. In most of those I read opposing the cartoon jihad, few directly confronted Islam as the myth that it is, but instead focused on why Muslims are overstepping their bounds to oppose dhimmitude on the world. Well, if they are true Muslims, they should. Should we be focusing more effort on calling their religious bluff, or is it simply a matter of convincing our allies of the right position, and hunkering down for the battle of faith vs. reason?

You make an excellent point. So far, we have focused only on the military defeat of our enemies in the Middle East. But that is not enough. One Muslim fanatic killed by our forces will only be replaced with another. Therefore, our War on Terrorism must also include a ideological component. We must defeat our foes both physically and philosophically. As Leonard Peikoff explains:

“Eliminating Iran’s terrorist sanctuaries and military capability is not enough. We must do the equivalent of de-Nazifying the country, by expelling every official and bringing down every branch of its government. This goal cannot be achieved painlessly, by weaponry alone. It requires invasion by ground troops, who will be at serious risk, and perhaps a period of occupation. But nothing less will “end the state” that most cries out to be ended.”

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=2635

Therefore in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran – and wherever else our troops go – we must have a vigorous de-Muslimization program. Our troops should become experts not just in throwing grenades but in converting the people of the Middle East to rationality. Every citizen of the countries we occupy should be required to undergo de-Muslimization. In this way we can effect a permanent end to Terrorism.

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we must have a vigorous de-Muslimization program.

I agree, but that will never fly, even with the american people. Bush got in deep sh*t for referring to it as a “Crusade” imagine if we really did try to start converting them. It does need to be done, but I do not think it should be done militarily, not at the point of a gun, you can’t force a mind right? It needs to be much more covertly, which is happening a little bit already with the young of Iran embracing western culture step by step. Philosophy follows pop culture, and they will let go of their primitive thinking.

If they don’t soon throw away their barbaric beliefs and get with the program, then all out war will probably be the result. I do not look forawrd to it.

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Spano, this won’t answer your questions directly, but perhaps give you food for thought concerning future op-eds.

Note that the Islamic furor over the cartoons is not because of their derogatoriness; a positive cartoon or picture would also be railed against. Why? Because a picture (or statue) is an objective fact, a thing outside of the mind, which is open to judgment and comparison. Comparison with what? For the Moslem—with any imagined image he may have in his own mind. For him to see a picture of his god, which will necessarily differ from his own, could lead him to the idea that other men, even other believers, have different images in their minds, which can lead to self-doubt, which can lead to the idea that his imagination is not reality. Before that doubt, the believer, in regard to his religion, operates on primacy of consciousness—he imagines God, or Allah, etc.; therefore, He exists. Thus, at root, the battle is not between reason and faith, but, more fundamentally, between primacy of existence and primacy of consciousness.

So, to weaken the strength of belief in Moslems, to instill doubt, thousands upon thousands of cartoons and caricatures of Allah and his prophets ought to be printed, and even more dumped as large-size confetti over Moslem-populated areas. The Moslem leaders themselves practically tell us what to do—they don’t want idolatry; why? because idolatry leads people astray from the true belief. The more split up and decentralized they are, the better for the rest of us. Of course, the above pertains to all religions, even those which aren’t as pure (more dedicated to primacy of consciousness) as Islam.

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I agree, but that will never fly, even with the american people. Bush got in deep sh*t for referring to it as a “Crusade” imagine if we really did try to start converting them. It does need to be done, but I do not think it should be done militarily, not at the point of a gun, you can’t force a mind right? It needs to be much more covertly, which is happening a little bit already with the young of Iran embracing western culture step by step. Philosophy follows pop culture, and they will let go of their primitive thinking.

History shows that a strong leader can overcome initial resistance and make a people follow him to glory. No, I don’t think Bush has it in him to command the nation. But the possibilities don’t start and end with the incumbent. In any case, we cannot afford to wait for western culture by itself to convert the Islamic world to reason. We need boots on the ground. As Dr. Peikoff says, “It requires invasion by ground troops, who will be at serious risk, and perhaps a period of occupation.” The U.S. Army better crank up the enlistment machine. We are going to need millions of uniformed Americans occupying territory from the Mediterranean Sea to the Hindu Kush. And they’re going to need lots of training and lots of body armor.

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de-Muslimization program.

What exactly do you have in mind? I’m genuinelly curious.

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What exactly do you have in mind? I’m genuinelly curious; I have images of people being tied up and made to listen to recordings of Aristotle.

For some, that might be an appropriate syllabus. However, I’d put my money on The Art of Thinking, a 14-hour discussion by Dr. Leonard Peikoff on CD. Of course, currently this lecture series is available only in English, but I’m sure we could find some Arab to translate it and record it. No, I don’t think anyone should be tied up while they are listening to it. But I do think they should be given pop quizzes to make sure they were paying attention and not drifting off as a lot of youngsters do in school today.

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Government is an instrument of force. In principle, it is not the role of government to be converting heathens.

I agree that defending one’s freedom with the military must be accompanied by defending it intellectually. That does not mean that we convert others. It does mean, however, that we do not say: “You’re right in some ways, religion is good, democracy is good, cartoons are inflammatory, make whatever constitution you want, let Sadr go, let’s give Sadaam a fair trial, … and so on”

Instead, the US must say: “We have a right to our existence and to the enjoyment of the world. You can stay out of our way, or we will act accordingly.”

If at all a Capitalist government gives other people advice, it should be simple: “follow our example”.

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Government is an instrument of force. In principle, it is not the role of government to be converting heathens.

Dr. Peikoff wrote that our war with the terrorists “is a clash of cultures, and thus a struggle of ideas, which can be dealt with, ultimately, only by intellectual means.” What good will it do to defeat the governments of Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran and then announce, “We respect your religion, your values, your way of doing business.” This would be the same as defeating the German army and then announcing, “We have no quarrel with the Nazi philosophy. It is not our role to convert you from a ideology of mass murder.”

Peikoff is right. There must be a massive program of de-Muslimization. The future of civilization is at stake.

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What good will it do to defeat the governments of Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran and then announce, “We respect your religion, your values, your way of doing business.” This would be the same as defeating the German army and then announcing, “We have no quarrel with the Nazi philosophy. It is not our role to convert you from a ideology of mass murder.”

I’m guessing you might have missed the word “not” in my post above.

The battle is intellectual; but, it’s not the government’s job.

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You make an excellent point. …

Suppose I rephrased what follows with this:

So far, we have focused only on the military defeat of our enemies in Germany and Japan, in 1943. But that is not enough. One Nazi or Japanese fanatic killed by our forces will only be replaced with another. Therefore, our War must also include a ideological component. We must defeat our foes both physically and philosophically.

America defeated Nazi Germany and Japan in WW2 not by convincing the rest of the world that rationality was a good thing, but by destroying their countries to a sufficient degree to utterly and absolutely neutralize their ability to wage war - in less time, incidentally, than has passed since 9/11/01. What’s more, the U.S. has certainly *not* focused on the military defeat of its real enemies. Iran and Saudi Arabia and Syria and “Palestine” and Pakistan remain untouched, and they are the primary sources of religious terrorism.

Ideally, this is a philosophic battle - but that’s a much longer term goal, particularly when the U.S. itself is light years away from generally holding to a fully rational philosophy. When terrorists are killing thousands of Americans and knocking down skyscrapers in the U.S., the essential and immediately required response is to kill enough of them, and their supporters, so that they simply don’t exist anymore. If that means incinerating 100 million Muslims with thermonuclear weapons, so be it (though it is almost certain that it would only take a demonstration of the real unleashed power of this country to achieve the same effect.) It is granting far too much to the enemy to suppose that “there will always be another.” Everything is finite - in the 1940s, today, and any time. A religious terrorist converted to radioactive plasma is an ineffective terrorist. In 2006, the U.S. doesn’t have to worry about German Nazis or Japanese militarists - they became solved problems by 1945. Can anybody imagine an American soldier in the 1940s worrying that killing Nazis and Japanese fanatics might just make them madder so we’d better be careful??

You cannot reason with a wild animal either, any more than a religious mentality. You just kill it if it poses a threat.

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What we could have done to speed “de-Muslimization” without actually trying to propagate our own ideology at the point of a gun (an impossibility) would have been to set up an American military government in Iraq that protected individual rights. This was not done because the war was seen as a primarily altruistic measure: we were “freeing” Iraq, not kicking the crap out of it because it was dangerous.

Our interests were not seen as primary, so we couldn’t expect them to be upheld.

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I’m guessing you might have missed the word “not” in my post above.

The battle is intellectual; but, it’s not the government’s job.

Perhaps it was not the government’s job in Germany and Austria, post-World War II, to remove swastikas from buildings and Nazi books from libraries, to close Nazi newspapers, and to ban the Nazi Party. But that is precisely what the Allied forces did in the ruins of the Third Reich. Who else was there to do it? The Red Cross? Imagine the consequences of defeating the Nazi war machine – and then doing nothing about correcting the ideology that produced it. Going to war with Germany every 20 years is not my idea of sanity.

We will never win in Iraq or in any other Muslim country unless we get rid of the hateful mindset that produces the fanatics.

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Of course the battle can only be won

  • by destroying the enemy ; or,
  • if the enemy stops fighting us

The enemy will stop fighting us if they change some evaluation. So, yes, the evaluations that the enemy is making are important to us.

The enemy’s evaluation is based on a mix of

  • how much they hate us and
  • what they think they can get away with

Take an example of Sadr, in Iraq. At some point, he decided to make a stand in Najaf. What did the US do? They spared him. His power and potential were obvious, and yet the US spared him because to take him out would have meant a lot of bloodshed, alienating his followers, and destroying some mosques. Today, Sadr is a key player pushing Iraq to theocracy and saying he doesn’t really recognize the constitution.

I agree that the weakness shown by the US is primarily an ideological one. When faced with Sadr, they were essentially thinking more on the lines of “What would Jesus do?” when they ought to have been thinking “What would Sadaam do?”

I’m not saying the essential battle is a concrete-bound, non-intellectual one. What I’m saying is that the primary requirement is for government to have a rational intellectual position. Second, the government has to articulate that position clearly. Third, enemies must know that the government means it.

The bulk of our enemies will change their intellectual positions quite fast if we were to take a rational and firm one ourselves.

Take your example of removal of swastikas and so on. How would the removal of a concrete change the mind of the German population, if they were all Nazis? The removal of such symbols, in a short period after vanquishing an enemy is a good tactic precisely because it is a demonstration that you are confident in your own stand, are not wishy-washy about hurting someone’s feelings, and they better re-educate themselves fast if they want to get along in the new world.

In Japan, we essentially dictated their new constitution. That was extremely important. If that’s the kind of thing you mean by the government waging an intellectual battle, then I agree. The government should have and present its intellectual position and make clear that it expects the enemy to comply.

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I’m not saying the essential battle is a concrete-bound, non-intellectual one. What I’m saying is that the primary requirement is for government to have a rational intellectual position. Second, the government has to articulate that position clearly. Third, enemies must know that the government means it.

In Japan, we essentially dictated their new constitution. That was extremely important. If that’s the kind of thing you mean by the government waging an intellectual battle, then I agree. The government should have and present its intellectual position and make clear that it expects the enemy to comply.

I don’t think we have a profound disagreement. We both believe that there needs to be a decisive use of force to effectuate a total military victory – and that in the process there is bound to be considerable bloodshed, including loss of “innocent” lives.

Our difference centers on how best to consolidate that victory, namely what role our government should play in overhauling the ideological foundations of the culture in the Middle East. I would have no objection to leaving this to the private sector. However, the enormous number of non-government personnel that are necessary to make this work are simply not on the scene. Just as it fell to the U.S. Army to get rid of Nazi books, newspapers, museums, organizations and emblems – so no one but our own military is in a position in Iraq to get rid of the mullahs, the madrasas, the fanatical journals, the insidious religious texts and the places of worship where murder is cultivated. Let our military clean house over there. And then the vacuum must be filled. The masses need to be provided with a proper philosophy to take the place of the medieval nonsense they been following ever since they entered this world. As I said earler, Dr. Peikoff’s The Art of Thinking would be an excellent starting point. This could be followed up by having the public read some of Ayn Rand’s novels – or, if they are illiterate, listen to them on tape.

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It is granting far too much to the enemy to suppose that “there will always be another.” Everything is finite - in the 1940s, today, and any time. A religious terrorist converted to radioactive plasma is an ineffective terrorist. In 2006, the U.S. doesn’t have to worry about German Nazis or Japanese militarists - they became solved problems by 1945. Can anybody imagine an American soldier in the 1940s worrying that killing Nazis and Japanese fanatics might just make them madder so we’d better be careful??

You cannot reason with a wild animal either, any more than a religious mentality. You just kill it if it poses a threat.

Exactly. We don’t have to tackle “de-Muslimization” of the middle east. We just need to “de-altruize” America so we can unleash our power and vaporize our enemies.

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Exactly. We don’t have to tackle “de-Muslimization” of the middle east. We just need to “de-altruize” America so we can unleash our power and vaporize our enemies.

I have no quarrel with your idea of vaporizing our enemies. Certainly more of this is in order. Nonetheless, as Dr. Peikoff has pointed out, “This goal cannot be achieved painlessly, by weaponry alone. It requires invasion by ground troops, who will be at serious risk, and perhaps a period of occupation. But nothing less will ‘end the state’ that most cries out to be ended.”

Bombs are not enough. The Muslim meme must be replaced with a rational meme.

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I have no quarrel with your idea of vaporizing our enemies. Certainly more of this is in order. Nonetheless, as Dr. Peikoff has pointed out, “This goal cannot be achieved painlessly, by weaponry alone. It requires invasion by ground troops, who will be at serious risk, and perhaps a period of occupation. But nothing less will ‘end the state’ that most cries out to be ended.”

Bombs are not enough. The Muslim meme must be replaced with a rational meme.

I think there is a difference between your conclusions and Dr. Peikoff’s statements. Here is the full paragraph from which you quoted:

Eliminating Iran’s terrorist sanctuaries and military capability is not enough. We must do the equivalent of de-Nazifying the country, by expelling every official and bringing down every branch of its government. This goal cannot be achieved painlessly, by weaponry alone. It requires invasion by ground troops, who will be at serious risk, and perhaps a period of occupation. But nothing less will “end the state” that most cries out to be ended.

The “equivalent of de-Nazifying the country”, according to Peikoff, comprises “expelling every official and bringing down every branch of its government.” Whether or not an invasion is required to accomplish this is a military matter – personally, I think we are fully capable of “ending the state” with air power alone – but in any event, Peikoff does not say anything about “replacing the Muslim meme with a rational meme”.

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The “equivalent of de-Nazifying the country”, according to Peikoff, comprises “expelling every official and bringing down every branch of its government.” Whether or not an invasion is required to accomplish this is a military matter – personally, I think we are fully capable of “ending the state” with air power alone – but in any event, Peikoff does not say anything about “replacing the Muslim meme with a rational meme”.

Well, I happen to agree with Peikoff: the goal cannot be achieved “by weaponry alone.” You need “ground troops.” Troops are required in Iraq for the same reason they were required in Japan and Germany after World War II. You have to get rid of the leadership, and you have to make sure the population doesn’t replace to deposed leaders with others who are equally bad. In short, you need a new ideological foundation.

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Well, I happen to agree with Peikoff: the goal cannot be achieved “by weaponry alone.” You need “ground troops.” Troops are required in Iraq for the same reason they were required in Japan and Germany after World War II. You have to get rid of the leadership, and you have to make sure the population doesn’t replace to deposed leaders with others who are equally bad. In short, you need a new ideological foundation.

“They” need a new foundation; all you, or we, need if more bad leaders appear is to blast them off the face of the earth. I am not here to altruistically serve anyone’s need for rational ideas.